normm

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normm
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  • Compared: Apple AirTag vs Tile Pro and Chipolo One Spot

    normmnormm
    Most of the AirTag's power is presumably for BlueTooth -- UWB is extremely low power.  Hopefully there will be much smaller future tags with tiny batteries, once most iPhones have UWB.
    forgot usernamewatto_cobra

  • Apple officially pulls iMac Pro from its online storefront

    normmnormm
    Love my iMac Pro.  Extremely reliable.  Unless their new machines have ECC RAM, I doubt they will be able to run on multi day or week computations as reliably.
    lkruppcpsrojdb8167watto_cobra

  • Apple announces M1 as first Mac Apple Silicon chip

    normmnormm
    mfryd said:
    Perhaps I missed it.  But I did not see any mention of clock speed, or Windows compatibility.

    I need to occasionally run Windows software.  I current use Parallels.   Will Apple Silicon based chips be able to run Parallels and Windows?  
    It can run Mac Intel apps under Rosetta, but not Windows Intel apps.

    That said, Microsoft makes a version of Windows that runs on their ARM Surface machines.  It includes a system for translating and caching x86 executables similar to Rosetta, to emulate x86 Windows Intel apps on ARM.  They have not announced its availability to run on Apple Silicon, but presumably they could.

    There are also cloud based services that let you maintain a virtual Windows machine running on a remote server, when you need it.
    watto_cobracornchip

  • Photographer Austin Mann puts iPhone 12 Pro through its paces

    normmnormm
    iOS_Guy80 said:
    Looking at the Apple website and comparing the two pro models the max seems to only have a larger screen and a bump in optical zooming over the 12 pro. Any other differences?
    Some significant differences in the cameras.  From Gruber's DaringFireball article a few days ago:
    • WIDE (1×): Same on iPhone 12, 12 Mini, and 12 Pro, with a new ƒ/1.6 lens that captures 27 percent more light than last year’s 1× wide lens. The 12 Pro Max has the same ƒ/1.6 lens, but also has an altogether different sensor that is 47 percent larger than the 1× camera sensor on the other models. This bigger sensor has the same number of pixels (12 MP = 4032 × 3024), but those pixels are bigger. The larger sensor combined with the new-to-all-models ƒ/1.6 lens means the 1× wide camera on the 12 Pro Max captures 87 percent more light than last year’s iPhone 11 models. And that’s not all: in addition to being bigger, the new Pro Max’s 1× camera sensor exclusively features sensor-shift OIS, stabilizing the sensor rather than the lens, which according to Apple is beneficial both for photos and video. This sensor-shift OIS is also what enables the 12 Pro Max’s ability to capture up to 2-second exposures handheld, which, if it works as Apple describes, is a breakthrough that would be impractical in non-computational photography. Bottom line: all iPhone 12 models have the same 1× camera lens, which is faster than last year’s models, but the 12 Pro Max also has a bigger sensor and sensor-shift OIS.
      TELEPHOTO: This is the lens that the non-Pro models do not have. On the iPhone 12 Pro, it’s a 2× ƒ/2.0 lens with equivalent field of view to a 52mm lens. On the 12 Pro Max, it’s a 2.5× ƒ/2.2 lens equivalent to a 65mm lens. The sensors, apparently, are the same or effectively the same. 2.5× is “better” than 2.0× because it’s longer, offering more effective optical zoom. But ƒ/2.0 is “better” than ƒ/2.2, because it lets in more light. But whatever low-light advantage the 12 Pro’s ƒ/2.0 aperture might have over the 12 Pro Max’s ƒ/2.2 aperture, in practice this is almost certainly effectively moot, because in low-light situations the camera system probably gets better results using the faster 1× camera and digitally zooming to a 2×/2.5× crop factor.

    muthuk_vanalingamrinosaurwinstoner71dewmewatto_cobra

  • Apple Silicon Macs are needed for consumers and pro users alike

    normmnormm
    sflocal said:
    Windows is a requirement for me.  There’s no way around it and Apple makes the best Windows machine around for my use case.   I use VMware and it was the primary reason I jumped to Apple way back when.

    It’s exciting stuff for sure.  I was planning on buying a new iMac this year, but now I’m going to pause on that to see what’s coming and how the market reacts to it.
    I assume Windows 10 for ARM will be available to run on this under VMware virtualization.  Windows for ARM runs x86 programs under emulation (with native speed for system calls), so whether you'll be happy depends on how fast you need x86 only programs to run.
    David H Dennis